Greer v. Moon, No. 20-cv-00647 (D. Utah Sep. 16, 2020)

[Harvey Danger]

He's not pro se.

You mean he's not IFP, after the judge stripped it a few months ago.

I bet it tore up Greer that he couldn't include his precious IFP status in his whining this time.

 

[Shig O'nella]

He is pro se.

Thought he'd lost that status months back.

Edit: Thank you for the correction. Got them flipped in my head.

 

[StinkySnack]

Thought he'd lost that status months back.

Well, that’s what you get for thinking.

 

[Useful_Mistake]

How can there be "witness intimidation" where there is no witness nor potential witness?

Also, what's this about "misrepresentations of sealed records"? Is he seething at Mr. Hardin asking the court (still pending, I believe) to have a looksies into ECF 1?

 

[Catgirls are Love]

For fun, let's look at the actual text from a case the AI decided to cite.

The AI says:


The actual case says:


Instead of just citing Rule 11 itself, the AI decided to cite a case that has a snippet of Rule 11 in it but is otherwise unrelated in context to Greee's case. I'd imagine the other citations are likely similarly lacking.

 

[Terrifik]

How can there be "witness intimidation" where there is no witness nor potential witness?

its for his dad & brother during the fit/sperg out.

if he wants lean in on the dead guy ok.

 

[Jacknife]

Guys there is no way he just fed chatgpt some facts and documents and it just spit this crap out.

He 100% did some probing to get this, feel free to try but i am sure if you just get chatgpt up to the case it will spit out a milquetoast filing that mostly seeks to mitigate the sanctions to Greers stupidity.

 

[Harvey Danger]

How can there be "witness intimidation" where there is no witness nor potential witness?

He intimidated possible witnesses, the most important kind.

 

[Useful_Mistake]

He intimidated possible witnesses, the most important kind.

There are no possible witnesses. As it relates to his father, Greer agrees that he has "no information relevant"

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.utd.148809/gov.uscourts.utd.148809.201.0.pdf

 

[DavidS877]

He intimidated possible witnesses, the most important kind.

We need a seance to find out how Steve feels about all of this. Are dead witnesses more important than possible witnesses?

 

[StinkySnack]

its for his dad & brother during the fit/sperg out.

if he wants lean in on the dead guy ok.

Are you on meth or something?

 

[Terrifik]

Are you on meth or something?

no , but understand want to speed up case not dicking around with know & confirmed facts.
main fact is case should of stayed in florida after info of already dead/witness is not living came back.

 

[Thoughtcrime84]

To be honest, I thought that GreerAI arc would be boring - the robot ironing out all the sperging.

But it turns out, it was also boring for Greeer. He started to abuse it to say what he wants it to say. The poor machine, by design, needs to make it sound coherent, so now it adds bunch of hallucinated facts and admissions that the whoremonger would never write himself.

So Mr Hardin can go and point out another list of lies where Greer will have a chance to either admit to "oppsie, honestly your honor, I can't be expected to not make up lies about your orders" or "oppsie, honestly your honor, I can't be expected to review every filing myself". In either case, excusable mistake, since the defence caught it and they weren't fooled/harmed by it.

 

[Harvey Danger]

This seemed like a non sequitir.



What does attorneys having "sanctions reversed for improper pleadings" have to do with construing pro se filings to a lower standard? Time for another round of Checking Greer's Bad Citations! (AI edition)

Spoiler: An actual good-faith mistaken pleading

Checking the Barnard cite:

Brian M. Barnard appeals from a district court order dismissing his complaint against the Utah State Bar and imposing sanctions against him under rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure.[1] We affirm the dismissal of his complaint but reverse the imposition of sanctions.

Note that this argument assumes the underlying pleading was improper. The Utah Supreme Court upheld the action's dismissal. If Russ wants this court to follow suit... from his drooling lips to God's ears.

The dismissal was upheld because the Court felt it was premature given the Bar review process, and thus that they lacked jurisdiction to intervene for Barnard. But the sanctions were overturned because Barnard actually did do his research, and discovered he was in a legitimate gray area of law.

In this case, the trial court found that Barnard did not make a reasonable inquiry that the suit was warranted under existing law or a good faith argument for extending, modifying, or reversing the law. In support of that finding, the court cited two actions Barnard commenced in district court raising similar legal issues. Both were dismissed, and in one sanctions were imposed. An appeal was pending in one of those actions at the time Barnard filed this action. Furthermore, the court cited a statement by Barnard in a verified pleading recognizing that the Utah Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction over and exclusive power to regulate the practice of law, including discipline.

A prolific pro se litigant after Greer's own heart. I can see why he likes the cite. However:

As we noted in Sutliff, rule 11 does not require perfect research but rather research that is "objectively reasonable under all the circumstances." Id. at 1236 (citation omitted). In other words, Barnard need not have reached the correct conclusion; he need only have made a reasonable inquiry. The trial court's order fails to acknowledge that Barnard submitted affidavits from eight attorneys indicating that they could find no law precluding a suit of this kind from being filed in district court. (Emphasis added.)

Does Greer have affidavits from 8 attorneys saying that they checked his work? Even ChatGPT would be ashamed to sign off on the garbage Greer files.

In addition, the order ignores Barnard's own affidavit, prepared in Sutliff and submitted as an exhibit in this case, describing his own research and his reliance on the fact that several district court judges had exercised jurisdiction over actions he had previously filed against the Bar.

Barnard reasonably concluded that because other judges had exercised jurisdiction, the next one would too. Greer has never had any judge agree with his accusations against opposing attorneys. In fact, he is arguing in front of 2 judges who explicitly disagreed with him multiple times, prior to Greer making the statements he is being sanctioned for.

In light of this evidence and in light of the fact that Sutliff had not yet been decided, we cannot say that Barnard failed to make a reasonable inquiry. While the trial court was ultimately correct in ruling that it lacked jurisdiction, we observe that our case law existing at the time Barnard filed his claim did not compel that result. As we noted in Sutliff, the law was anything but clear on the jurisdictional issue...

That is quite the threshold for "good faith" misunderstandings of law. The judges who literally decided the case law saying Barnard was wrong, also admit that case law wasn't clear at the time Barnard filed.

Greer has nowhere near this level of established doubt.

We think the Sutliff analysis amply demonstrates that although Barnard may have reached the wrong conclusion, his error did not qualify for rule 11 sanctions. His legal error was based on his own research and his previous experience in filing actions against the Bar in district court and was subsequently supported by the research of eight other attorneys. His reading of the law as it existed when he commenced his action was at least plausible, and hence sanctions under rule 11 are not warranted.

There is not a drop of "excusable neglect" in that fact pattern.

TL;DR the cited pro se filing was held to a damn high standard. The Appeals Court that created the very case law used to dismiss his claim, outright admitted that "the law was anything but clear" when Barnard made his filing. He had previous successful cases to cite and affidavits from 8 attorneys to back him up. You can't get any more of a good faith claim than that.

That a far, far cry from "I never read the SPO so my opinion was in good faith".

 

[LiveFromNS]

What I find interesting is him saying that monetary sanctions would have a "severe chilling effect" on a pro se party.

While that can be partially true on people who cannot afford a lawyer, the little fucker is gliding by the fact that ANYONE can be a pro se litigant. Elon Musk could file as a pro se if he so chose.

He is trying to make it sound like "pro se" means a poor person. Or more appropriately, he is using pro se as a shield in place of his lost IFP status.

Does anyone else get that vibe? If so, (and I am unsure if Mr. Hardin gets to reply) I hope Mr. Hardin points out that being pro se doesn't mean he cannot afford sanctions in addition to noting how Russell has money for his lunatic schemes and plans.

 

[Unknown God]

Although it's mildly interesting seeing an LLM manufacturing lies for him, I'll say that GreerAI doesn't hit the spot like OG Greer does. Sadly, the one good thing about this litigation (that it provides very expensive lolcow content) has lost a lot of value.
@Useful_Mistake does Hardin have the right to respond and point out the bullshit during this particular procedure?

 

[Harvey Danger]

He is trying to make it sound like "pro se" means a poor person. Or more appropriately, he is using pro se as a shield in place of his lost IFP status.

When this filing gets ignored and the sanctions approved, his first Motion To Undo The Thing That Just Happened will re-plead his poverty. "Even though I'm not technically IFP, because the Defense jumped on a badly worded response, I am actually so poor that you should grant me honorary IFP and knock the sanctions down to $100."

There are no possible witnesses.

Of course not, because Hardin intimidated them all into being upset with Greer!

Incidentally I still maintain that stipulation was too weak and won't hold up. Greer does not have the integrity or the mental capacity to abide by voluntary agreements to his detriment. The moment he realizes its implications (if the suit makes it that far), he will immediately back out and submit a new list of witnesses.

 

[ShinyStar]

So a large part of my theory about why the prior sanction was reduced so drastically and outside of standard procedure was that the judge had a thought process that went something like this: A.) There are multiple sanctions available for the misconduct. The more severe sanction is refusing to allow Greer's witnesses, and the lesser sanction is requiring him to reimburse fees. B.) The magistrate judge determined that the lesser sanction was appropriate. C.) The parties independently agreed to remove all of Greer's current and potential witnesses. D.) Surely, C would only have happened due to a wily lawyer pulling some trick on a naive pro se litigant, I cannot conceive of any other reason the plaintiff would agree to take the greater sanction when the court said he did not have to. E.) It does not seem fair to give the pro se plaintiff both the lesser sanction and the greater sanction, when the magistrate judge already determined that the greater sanction was inappropriate. F.) I have to give some sanction, because it is required in the circumstance, but if I reduce the size of the financial sanction, that feels more fair.

If I am correct that the parties' agreement to in effect give Greer the greater sanction for the previous misconduct played a role for reducing the amount of the sanctions, then it should follow that the sanctions would not be reduced as much this time. Given that Greer's IFP status also played a role previously and is no longer a factor, I think it is much less likely that the sanctions are reduced. Also, the court has personally dealt with Greer's recalcitrance, and has reason to believe that is because he has no case, rather than being a reaction to injustice that he has experienced. I am going to go on the record as being optimistic that there will not be a reduction in sanctions.

My one caveat to this is that the judges might still feel bad about making a poor retard pay so much money, and so they might chose to dismiss the case and then determine that the issue of sanctions is moot.

 

[obsdj]

Incidentally I still maintain that stipulation was too weak and won't hold up. Greer does not have the integrity or the mental capacity to abide by voluntary agreements to his detriment. The moment he realizes its implications (if the suit makes it that far), he will immediately back out and submit a new list of witnesses.

Then the stipulation would be voided and Hardin would be free to subpoena Greer's dad and brother again, whoopsie-doodle.

 

[Shig O'nella]

He is trying to make it sound like "pro se" means a poor person. Or more appropriately, he is using pro se as a shield in place of his lost IFP status.

Does anyone else get that vibe?

So much so I just made a complete idiot of myself (That is not exactly an unusual occurance.)